NYPD Cops Handcuff and Detain 7 year old Latino boy, over missing $5: Interrogated for 4 Hours
From [HERE] This kid was no killer — but some callous Bronx cops sure treated him like one.
Instead of earning himself a simple trip to the principal’s office, a terrified 7-year-old Latino boy was hauled out of class, handcuffed like a hardened criminal and “interrogated” by police for a grueling 10 hours — all over a playground dispute involving $5, his family is charging.
Officers showed up at PS X114 on Dec. 4 at about 10:20 a.m., and handcuffed and held Wilson in a room there for four hours. They then hauled him off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse, according to a $250 million claim against the city and the NYPD.
According to the family's attorney, the responding officers intimidated, verbally assaulted, and threatened the youth for the duration of his stay. The NYPD denies such treatment happened. A department spokeswoman claims the boy was only restrained at the precinct for four hours and forty minutes.
The boy protested his innocence, to no avail.
“My son was crying, ‘Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!’ I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized,” Wilson Reyes’ distraught mom, Frances Mendez told The Post last night.
“Imagine how I felt seeing my son in handcuffs!’’ she said. “It was horrible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
The bizarre overreaction by cops came after the child had been accused of swiping $5 from another student after school. The money, which was supposed to be used for a school trip that never happened, had fallen on the ground in front of Wilson and two other boys, and one of them scooped it up.
Wilson was falsely accused of taking it, and he scuffled with one of the kids.